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For the first time last month, I managed to miss a monthly update! Things have been CRAZY round here and time has been precious (and I’ll be honest sometimes when I have an hour or two to myself, I use it to aimlessly scroll through Instagram or just sit and watch television!). People told me the first year with two under two is the hardest but honestly they’re both at (cute but) exhausting ages right now!

Max is 14 months old now and is doing really well, as ever, we are massively proud of him.

He’s got nine teeth (or maybe ten by the time this is published as I’m writing this a couple of days in advance and one bit of his gum is so lumpy there must be a tooth just under the surface ready to escape!)

He’s cruising super confidently, getting better at standing independently and taking the occasional step by himself. Who knows, by next month we may be reporting back that he’s walking. But it may take a little longer, we’re in no rush.

Max is insanely good at climbing, just like his sister has been from an early age, and now takes anyone opening the front door as I sign that he should bolt out there and crawl up the drive as fast as he can – it’s a good job we don’t have a door that opens out onto a busy road!

Food-wise he’s doing really well, we have a few food trials left to try but it’s mostly stuff we’re fairly confident he’ll pass and also mostly stuff we don’t eat often at home so that’s why they’ve been left til last. We had a failed soya trial a couple of weeks ago that resulted in mountains of poo and horrible sleep. We have to keep trying though so no doubt there’ll be future updates about that. Portions are huge! He can eat and eat and eat.

His sleep is still very variable. We seem to have a few days where he’s really good and we start feeling like we’ve cracked it, and then all of a sudden he goes back to being a real pickle overnight! I must say, he’s back to settling himself when we put him down to bed which is fantastic after weeks of having to rock him to sleep like a newborn. But as I say, we’ve been through this cycle multiple times before and by the time this comes out we might be subject to hours of rocking and hours of watching Netflix at 2am again.

I’m not sure what he weighs at the moment as he hasn’t been weighed recently, but he’s moved into 12-18m clothes, although some of it is a little baggy.

When he’s not tired or hungry, Max is just the happiest little boy! He likes to get on his knees, clap and do this weird ‘jumping’ thing where he goes across the floor on his knees! It’s very funny and cute. He absolutely loves giving kisses and he still likes his hugs too.

Words-wise he is definitely saying yes, mommy, daddy, nana, banana, ta, there and digger. He also says something that sounds like Alex (without the x, same way his cousin says it!).

So here we are again, another month on! Alexandra turned 17 months at the weekend. I was thinking recently how lovely it’ll be to have these posts as a record of her life to look back on, alongside all the photos of course.

Last month saw huge progress in terms of her talking and I feel like this month has been the same. She’s definitely much more understandable than she was before and is also making great use of hand actions to direct us when she doesn’t know the word. She’s a complete bossy boots, at the weekend she was telling her dolly off and then told daddy off (including shouting ‘no no daddy’ and waggling her finger at him) because he was drinking his drink which clearly she didn’t want him to do.

Alex is definitely catching up on the teeth front which is a relief as we thought she was going to remain a gummy bear forever! We’re now halfway there. She’s got all eight of her front teeth plus the first two molars at the top – to be honest we didn’t notice they were there for a while as she just bites us if we try and put our fingers in her mouth, so there’s a chance the bottom ones might be there too. I’m really glad she doesn’t appear to be suffering too much with them.

She’s still loving nursery and we had a good report from her key worker at parents’ evening, they’ve got no concerns about her really. She doesn’t seem to talk much while she’s there even though she’s chattering away all the time at home.

To celebrate turning 17 months, we put on Wizard of Oz. For some reason, Dylan started playing the songs to her to calm her down whenever she was crying when she was tiny but she’s never actually seen the film. We expected her to watch maybe half an hour at most but she actually watched all of it! Just shows she can concentrate when she wants to.

Generally in life, I find buying a pair of shoes to be an easy task. Go into shop, select pair you like, try them on, if they fit purchase them and go home happy. Simple. I’ve now found that purchasing a pair of shoes for a toddler is about 6462157622229856 times more complicated than this and has a lot more steps before a final happy purchase. The tale goes as such:

Go into Clark’s (other retailers also available but let’s face it, it should be the law that you have to go to Clark’s).

Ask nice lady to measure your child’s feet.

Cue child screaming as if nice lady is coming at them with a knife.

After five minutes of crying and squirming, nice lady says she thinks child is a 3.5E.

Nice lady searches and comes back shaking her head, there are no shoes in a 3.5E.

Go to second Clark’s outlet which is slightly bigger to check if they have a 3.5E.

They don’t.

Try third Clark’s outlet in different town, just to be sure.

Nice lady 2 in Clark’s branch 3 asks if she can measure child’s feet.

Nice lady 2 says she’s actually a 4F, which they DID have in original Clark’s branch.

Leave store without even trying on a pair of shoes as child is so worked up it sounds like she’s being murdered.

Return to branch 1 to tell nice lady 3 about the confusion.

Decide to stick at it this time and endure a full on meltdown while nice lady 3 tries not to get kicked in the face as she measures child’s feet.

Nice lady 3 says she’s a 3.5F on one foot and slightly bigger on the other.

Try not to cry.

Nearly kiss nice lady 3 when she suggests they may have some 4Fs that come up small which would be ideal.

Choose between four options.

First option leaves child (who is still screaming) walking on the side of her feet as if she’s modelling those rip-off Uggs which always lean horrendously.

Consider just giving up and leaving child barefoot for life.

Try option two which HALLELUJAH actually fit.

Decide taking shoes off child will be too much hassle, child is still crying.

Stand in store for 40 minutes trying to stop child ripping off shoes/sitting on the floor crying/looking at you like you’ve just thrown away all her teddies.

Let child walk outside in shoes.

Rejoice as crying finally stops.

The next day, endure ten minutes of crying when attempting to put the shoes on.

This reduces to five the following day.

Just two minutes the next day.

FINALLY child accepts shoes being put on very calmly.

Over the next few days, child becomes very attached to shoes and keeps offering them to you in a bid for you to put them on her even when you’re not going out.

Start sleeping soundly at night, relieved the saga is over, until…

Two weeks later have a busy day which involves putting the shoes in child’s rucksack while child wears wellies as it’s wet and muddy outside.

The following day, search entire house four times to locate one missing shoe.

Search both cars.

Return to every single place you visited over the weekend in a bid to track down lost shoe.

No luck. Return to original Clark’s branch praying they have some left in stock.

Success, one 4F pair of pink shoes, still in the sale.

Resolve to check for both shoes approximately once every five minutes in future.

Chalk this one up to a bad mistake.

The next day, receive text from nana ‘just gone to put my boot on and Alexandra’s shoe is in it’.

Realise rather than blaming yourself for not taking better care of your child’s shoes, you should have been pointing the finger of suspicion at her as she’s clearly made good use of the 30 SECONDS she was left unattended in the hallway with nana’s boots.